Potatoes

by Jim

In the 1930s, 40s and part of 1950 my grandfather was a potato farmer. I remember going to the fields with him and asking how many acres he had. He told me it runs from there to there, over to the trees and back here. Now I know.

Once I was riding in a big stake-bed truck full of bags of potatoes. I think they were five pound bags. They were backing the truck down a ramp into the potato house (the potato house was built underground, the only part you saw was the roof, a pitched roof). My grandfather took me out of the cab and told me to sit on the wall until they unloaded.

“Good season,” he said. “Got a nickel a bag.”

I was thinking, “A lot of bags in this truck.” Little did I know how many potatoes were dug up every year.

Mom and Dad always had potatoes in the house. Seems to me we had them at every meal. A lot of days, when I got home from school, Mom would peel a potato and I’d eat it like an apple. Those days are gone and so are the teeth.